50 years ago, Bob Beamon made history. Where does his performance rank on list of greatest singular sports performances?

PS. We have a second piece on the stubborness of the long jump WR.

http://www.letsrun.com/news/2018/10/long-jump-world-record-hard-break/

The altitude messes it up.

How many WR's did we see in that meet?

I put it behind....

Houston McTears WR 9.0 as just a HS junior. Think about that.

Tommie Smiths 19.5 200m straight was amazing.

MJ's 19.32 is still the American record.

Why does no one other than the guy above me ever talk about this being altitude aided? What is that worth in unaided conditons?

Whatley wrote:

The altitude messes it up.

How many WR's did we see in that meet?

I put it behind....

Houston McTears WR 9.0 as just a HS junior. Think about that.

Tommie Smiths 19.5 200m straight was amazing.

MJ's 19.32 is still the American record.

Maybe the altitude was a factor but it certainly doesn't account for an improvement of that magnitude. Why didn't the other competitors jump big prs if the altitude made such a difference? Ralph Boston was favored but his best jump was 16 inches shorter.

Whatley wrote:

The altitude messes it up.

If you read the article, you learn that scientific study determined the altitude and wind were worth one foot and one-quarter of an inch (31 cm). He broke the WR of 27-4 ¾ (8.35m) by nearly 2 feet - (1' 9¾" or 55 cm).

So if the study is right, he still broke the WR by 9½" (24 cm) which is 2.8%.

So understand it this way. 2.8% of the marathon WR is 3:10 so that would be like running a 1:58:29 marathon.

How many PR's and world records did we see in that meet?

math major wrote:

Whatley wrote:

The altitude messes it up.

If you read the article, you learn that scientific study determined the altitude and wind were worth one foot and one-quarter of an inch (31 cm). He broke the WR of 27-4 ¾ (8.35m) by nearly 2 feet - (1' 9¾" or 55 cm).

So if the study is right, he still broke the WR by 9½" (24 cm) which is 2.8%.

So understand it this way. 2.8% of the marathon WR is 3:10 so that would be like running a 1:58:29 marathon.

Ok so he broke the WR by nine inchs not two feet.

Wyco Loco wrote:

Why does no one other than the guy above me ever talk about this being altitude aided? What is that worth in unaided conditons?

Because altitude doesn't matter that much, and no one else came close to Beamon's jump or the previous WR in Mexico City. He won by 71 cm.

Everyone discussing feet and inches needs to wake up to the fact their opinion does not count. Jumps are conducted in meters. They were conducted in meters 50 years ago. You either know the record was 8.90, or you're nobody. And if you know it was 8.90, you don't pointlessly convert it to a needlessly complex non-decimal system, or bother with people who do.

Powell's WR has lasted longer than Beamon's, and nobody has got close to Lewis either. That they were both jumping 8.87 or farther in the same meet is far the greater anomaly than Beamon's solo outlier.

The reason for the anomalies is probably weather. Wind can do strange things, still in one spot and raging in another. The gauge only measures one little spot; if it's over limit half the time like in the Powell/Lewis battle, then it's probably over limit on half the runway and half the pit, on average, all the time, so that every single jump was heavily wind-aided.

FINALLY....someone who understands the wind.

There will not be a sheet of wind the length of a 8 lane track. So when we see this "basic" silliness, it's just that....silliness.

Winds gust, they swirl, they don't blow evenly the same speed in all 8 lanes for 10 seconds, that simply doesn't happen.

I have a garden and little wind mills around it, I'll see half of them swirling away while not a foot away....nothing.

Bob Beamon did have a jump where everything came together. When he jumped 8.90 in Mexico City, he did so at 7,350 feet of altitude (which allowed him to sprint faster in his approach and hang in the air longer) with the maximum allowable tailwind. He also got lucky with the weather: had he taken his jump just 15 minutes later, he would have done so in a downpour, killing any chance of a monster leap.

With the rain coming so soon after, does the physics analysis take the barometric pressure into account?

Similarly, the "altitude" calculation is largely only externals, and doesn't consider e.g., breathing and/or muscular oxygenation/contraction issues.

We can only guess how far Emmiyan would have jumped, if he had the other advantages of natural talent and Western pharmaceuticals. He's probably the best, ever.

What about all that wind blowing around in each of your heads? There are plenty of IQ tests around, but the single-most effective moron test is whether or not you agree with Bad Wigins - there are no false positives here. If you agree, you are a moron. Congratulations, you two.

Not another idiot who knows nothing about how winds work, sheesh~~~~

Dummy, I've ran on dirt tracks, watched the dust blow our of lanes 23 4 just not my lane seven and vice versa.

So shut up stupid.

Bad Wigins wrote:

Everyone discussing feet and inches needs to wake up to the fact their opinion does not count. Jumps are conducted in meters. They were conducted in meters 50 years ago. You either know the record was 8.90, or you're nobody. And if you know it was 8.90, you don't pointlessly convert it to a needlessly complex non-decimal system, or bother with people who do.

Hey dip$hit, there are TWO systems of measurement and the US uses feet/inches. This is as dumb as arguing the temperature in Celsius versus Fahrenheit. Yes, the measurement is officially in metric but you just sound like the biggest A-hole on LetsRun.com right now and that is an impressive feat. You make some good points after your childish tirade but I doubt many people read that far because nobody wants to bother with people with childish attitudes.

I remember watching it on TV. It sticks in my mind much like the first rocket launch into orbit did when I was a 5th grader. I can see it like it was yesterday. No other sports moment comes close, at least for me. I think many years later, Secretariat winning the Belmont is up there but not quite comparable for obvious reasons.

Not sure where it ranks but Secretariat's Belmont is the top performance followed closely by his Derby and Preakness.

All three records still stand and the Belmont time is still the World Record for the distance.

Certainly there have been other meets at altitude since ‘68 yet very few have ever come close.

And Carl Lewis has 5 out of the top 10 and 9 out of the top 20 performances.

http://www.alltime-athletics.com/mlongok.htm

Other field events are similar in that old performances from the 80s/90s stick around in the top 5 for a long time.

For the long jump I think it has to do with sprinters no longer doing the Long Jump like Lewis used to.

Alan

Carl Lewis jumped 30 feet at the US championships but fouled by a qtr inch. His heels landed right at the mark when you see the video. The dummies raked the sand before they could do a measurement.....